Sparky seemed to give a small update over on their site. I still am truly looking forward to this game. Sure I have been playing a ton of wow, and Pirates, and Rome TW, but to be honest I am still realy really looking forward to this title.

No mulitplayer AND no customization, that's gonna be really tough to overcome. The FAQ calls it a kind of sandbox game, but when you can't really customize it, that undercuts alot of the appeal. Multiplayer would be a way to add appeal but sadly this game doesn't have that either.

The first thing I'd want to do is create Godzilla, King Kong, etc- for my own use if nothing else. Same thing with maps, I'd want to make a map of my town to stomp on.

It's a bummer that's a no-go. Imagine those Freedom Force games if you couldn't design your own hero.

No mulitplayer AND no customization, that's gonna be really tough to overcome. The FAQ calls it a kind of sandbox game, but when you can't really customize it, that undercuts alot of the appeal. Multiplayer would be a way to add appeal but sadly this game doesn't have that either.

Well, we could do multiplayer -- and we still may -- but it's taking forever just to get single-player done. We're only two people. Multiplayer for us is massively complicated, especially with the huge size of our maps and amount of buildings we use. As to customizeablity...well, it's a 2D game. With 3D games, it's easy for anyone to make a new skin. With a 2D game, you'd have to make your own sprite and animate it. :shock: So instead, we let you pick from standard monster body types, change its colors, name it, mix-n-match its abilities/powers/weapons. That's pretty much all we can offer with a 2D game. So you can make a green lizard-type monster with fire breath and name it after...uh, that special someone. You just can't make him look exactly like him (there are legal liability concerns, too).

We plan on doing a city editor at some point, but that requires a complete redesign of our tools. TCFH isn't tile-based like SimCity or Starcraft. We'd have to make a tile-based tool and provide tiles and generic buildings, etc. Whew. I just want it to be done. :evil:

After reading your FAQ, I realize I missed the significance of the part about you guys doing monster and city expansion packs. It doesn't make alot of sense for you guys to make that stuff user modifiable if you plan to sell expanion packs for it later, my bad. :oops:

Well, to be fair, we also have three cats and an elderly clownfish, but they don't contribute anything. Okay - the fish wrote the 2D sorting algorithm.

Quote

After reading your FAQ, I realize I missed the significance of the part about you guys doing monster and city expansion packs. It doesn't make alot of sense for you guys to make that stuff user modifiable if you plan to sell expanion packs for it later, my bad. :oops:

Heh...that reason actually never occurred to me until you mentioned it. Really, it's just that we can't create a tool that would easily let players do what we do -- create monster models in a 3D program, animate 12-20 animation sequences (turn, walk, kick, punch, freak out, hork up flames, stomp, fidget, die etc.), and then render them in 16 different views as sprites (I guess you could just draw the crapzillion sprites by hand in 2D, if you were totally insane). Then there's the separate monster shadows, footprints, "hotspots", z-height data (which lets the game know what part of the monster is underwater) and stuff that has to be set. Now, if folks want to do all that, we will happily provide them with the file format information so they can. I just don't have any way of making the process user-friendly for the average gamer.

I guess you could just draw the crapzillion sprites by hand in 2D, if you were totally insane)... Now, if folks want to do all that, we will happily provide them with the file format information so they can. I just don't have any way of making the process user-friendly for the average gamer.

Believe me, there's alot of us out here who like to do that stuff. Just provide the format info and such and watch the stuff that pops up. Unlike you guys, someone like me would only work on a specific element(like monsters). So it doesn't really matter to me how involved and long a process it is, I don't have the entire game to develop, just the one element I feel like customizing.

I realize that only a small portion of your target audience will DO it, but a large chunk of you regular nonmodding audience will be more than happy to download whatever is created by modders. And if your regular target audience was to see alot of custom materials being developed for use with your game, that might encourage more sales.

I'm wondering if there will be any commands for recording gameplay, or would we need to use Fraps or something?

Reason I ask is because I have this idea of using this game to make a virtual monster movie. This game could provide overhead footage of the monster on a rampage, then maybe I could use Garrysmod to do the closeup stuff with the ragdolls as 'actors'.

I'm wondering if there will be any commands for recording gameplay, or would we need to use Fraps or something?

Yup, that's built into the engine. There's a frame recorder, so you can save raw frames to disk, which you could then import into Premiere or whatever as a movie (including the custom title, credit, end screens, etc). You can also just share your favorite game -- if your friend also owns TCFH, you can send him a small file that lets the game engine play back your exact game (we use this for debugging).

C++ and assembler? C++ I can understand,.. BUt assembler made me want to shoot myself... Well about as much as Java... of course I did it on a very old computer and only had.. what... 4 registars, making life hell trying to do anything...

C++ and assembler? C++ I can understand,.. BUt assembler made me want to shoot myself...

We use assembler in a few key places where speed is important, like our custom blitting functions: alpha blending, color shifting, and image decompression, using MMX. We have a lot of crap on screen at once (we can easily at any given time have 1500-2000 sprites on screen at 1024x768 16-bit color), so the only way to get any sort of drawing performance is by "writing to the metal". :twisted: